Similar to @vickyace's neutralize, which I like is the word

incapacitate

make unable to perform a certain action

_{Source: Macmillian}

That is, you remove someone's capacity [to do something]. This is frequently used in the firearms community, when talking about a weapon's stopping power:

Stopping power is the ability of a firearm or other weapon to cause enough ballistic trauma to a target (human or animal) to immediately incapacitate (and thus stop) the target. This contrasts with lethality in that stopping power pertains only to a weapon's ability to incapacitate quickly, regardless of whether death ultimately occurs.

_{Source: Wikipedia article on stopping power}

You can see here it only describes the power to remove someone's ability to act.

The drawback of this word, like neutralize, is that it's not specific to incapacitating powerful people. For that, you may consider dethrone, but that has its own limitations.

Similar to @vickyace's neutralize, which I like is the word

incapacitate

make unable to perform a certain action

_{Source: Macmillian}

That is, you remove someone's capacity [to do something]. This is frequently used in the firearms community, when talking about a weapon's stopping power:

Stopping power is the ability of a firearm or other weapon to cause enough ballistic trauma to a target (human or animal) to immediately incapacitate (and thus stop) the target. This contrasts with lethality in that stopping power pertains only to a weapon's ability to incapacitate quickly, regardless of whether death ultimately occurs.

_{Source: Wikipedia article on stopping power}

You can see here it only describes the power to remove someone's ability to act.

The drawback of this word, like neutralize, is that it's not specific to incapacitating powerful people. For that, you may consider dethrone, but that has its own limitations.